


be quiet, now, it's not the time for crying

by bxzukhov



Category: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Genre: College, F/M, Meet-Cute, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-04 14:43:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20472758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bxzukhov/pseuds/bxzukhov
Summary: a fairly esoteric series of yomiel/sissel meditations. includes the assumption that they both went to college!





	1. neo-gothic ruminations

**Author's Note:**

> this is another 5-year rewrite, basically to-the-day, except i never published this one out of...fear of it being bad? the feeling of it being incomplete? who knows! it's been a lot of fun to patch up these old fics, especially since the concepts underneath still generally appeal to me, making it relatively easy to swap the words out for better ones. there's still plenty of room for improvement, but these are objectively better than they were before, which makes me happy! so if you don't like whatever this is, know it could be a LOT worse, okay

sissel rubbed her aching head. she hadn’t had a single drink yet, but everything was already pounding. the music, the dancing, the yelling…

sissel thought about the farm. she thought about cows, and chicken coops, and the way the air held still before the sun came up. she thought about a quiet house. she thought about her mother’s timid smile when sissel showed her the acceptance letter to such an  _ urban _ school, and the way her father’s calloused hands and dirt-stained jeans looked so out of place against the neo-gothic ornamentations of the main buildings in the quad. she thought about heavy, dusty books in the attic, with old photographs of the great european cathedrals, and about the day she decided she was going to major in art history. she thought about--

sissel heard typing. a computer. she remembered the first time she saw one, on a field trip to the library in the nearest population center. she remembered trying to put everything she was told about the internet and programming together, but it didn’t make any sense to her. the numbers fell through her mind like sand through her fingers. the teacher and the librarian both tried to stress phrases like  _ emerging career field, _ but...

sissel thought about art history again. she had no goals for her career, but being able to run her hands along the carved stones of the chapel was more than enough for now. she had put in the work and gotten her dream out of it. she was now a  _ student, _ in the most romantic sense of the term. 

at times like these, though, the romance seemed dead, and she had to admit she missed the farm.

sissel found herself on wooden stairs, the pounding music trailing behind her. the typing was coming from in front of her. how had she found the basement? she couldn’t remember. her roommate had dragged her out to the frat party, then she got overwhelmed by all the noise, and now she was here.

the wood and the quiet and the darkness. a dim light illuminated the cracks and faults in the steps. she slowly shifted her weight to each one. in some sense, she felt at home, as though she were climbing down from the attic once again.

sissel heard the typing again, much louder this time. closer. she reached the bottom of the stairs and rounded the shadowy corner.

a young man was sitting at the computer. text commands filled the monitor. he continued to type. when sissel approached from behind, he either didn’t notice or chose not to respond to the sound of footsteps.

sissel was immediately drawn to him, can of soda in one hand, his other gliding across the keyboard. she tapped on his shoulder. 

“what are you programming?” 

he looked up at her, visibly surprised to see that someone had not only found his hideaway but was interested in what he was doing in it. he stumbled over his words.

“it’s a game, i suppose. there’s nothing to see, but you...you see, this is where you type the commands in, and so you tell it to perform an action when a command is given, so if i type in, say…” 

sissel was lost in his voice. the sensation of sand falling through her fingers was back, but this time, it made her smile. realizing how much in this world she would never understand was once dizzying and intimidating, but now it was exhilarating. any lingering hesitation about whether college was  _ right _ for her (always heard in her mother’s voice) was left at the top of the stairs, along with the heavy scent of alcohol and sweat.

the man realized he wasn’t really being listened to, and rubbed the back of his neck, giving a sheepish grin. “my name’s yomiel,” he said, holding out his hand. sissel shook it politely, gradually returning to him, and the basement, and reality.

sissel pulled a chair up next to him. yomiel turned back to the screen. “why are you down here? 

“the music was loud,” sissel sighed. “but then i found myself down here. it’s quiet.”

yomiel nodded. “were you planning on getting drunk tonight?”

sissel glanced at the creaking wooden ceiling, assuming it to be the bottom of an impromptu dance floor. “i was, actually. just not this early. it’s only been an hour since the party started.”

yomiel held up his watch. “two hours.”

“oh.” sissel stood up. “i guess we might as well get drunk now, right?”

sissel’s head was reeling once again, but every time she thought about what she was about to do, a spark ran through her body. eighteen years of the suppression of a gently rebellious nature had manifested in about the exact way she had expected: drinking out of a red solo cup with a boy she had just met. she thought about the farm again, but it felt much further away now.

yomiel noticed the way her mouth twisted after each sip. “have you drank before?”

sissel shook her head. “and this is my third week here.” 

he grinned. “you made it pretty far in, then. you’re already doing better than i was a year ago.”

sissel kept drinking, now with a little more self-consciousness. “how much alcohol have you had before?”

“oh, not a lot, there’s just these guys in my programming class who like dragging me out to parties. i usually have one beer, then i go down and program the rest of the time. one time i actually got drunk, and when i woke up, everyone was gone except for this one girl who was poking my cheek over and over. i realized that my face had been on the keyboard the whole night and there were about fifty pages of random letters.” yomiel laughed. “and nobody’s discovered my little hiding spot since until tonight, actually.”

sissel had absent-mindedly drank half her glass by the time he turned back to her, smiling. 

the next thing she remembered was bending over the curb outside.

she vomited again. the moonlight reflected off of the small pool on the concrete. yomiel patted her back gently.

“don’t fight it,” he whispered, sitting on the curb a healthy distance from sissel.

she smiled weakly. “did this happen your first time too?”

yomiel continued to rub her back. “i didn’t go as hard as you did. seriously, were you trying to impress me or something?” 

sissel suddenly noticed he had been touching her back for the last several minutes. she sat down next to him, avoiding her own mess. after a long pause, all she said was “i’m not really thinking right now, sorry.” 

she thought she remembered putting her head on his shoulder, but no part of that night was easy to set straight the next, aching morning. at the very least, she knew that she  _ wanted  _ to. and even though sissel couldn’t answer his question at the time, she was pretty certain that she was, in fact, trying to impress him by drinking as much as she had.

sissel was certain he walked her back to her dorm, too. she must have gotten there somehow, and she also remembered telling him she’d “see him around” not too long before she fell asleep, so it  _ must _ have been after he walked her back. that was the story, anyways, and it stuck.


	2. a short dive into a deep pond

there was a little diner close to campus that was well-patronized by students. it was quieter, cleaner, and had much better food than either of the main halls. sissel had been turned onto it by the end of her first week, and frequented it the rest of her four years at the university. 

on her way to a table, she recognized the boy from the party. “oh, yomiel!” 

he seemed surprised at the attention, but pleasantly so. “sissel! i’ll be right back.”

a minute later, he put his sandwich down on the table across from her. neither knew what to say.

“so,” sissel managed through nervous laughter, “do you come here often?”

yomiel shrugged. “from time to time.” 

during the moment of silence, sissel noticed that yomiel was wearing the same red sweatshirt he was wearing when they met, as well as the same sunglasses, which made for a somewhat less-weird fashion accessory outside of the dark frat house basement.

sissel decided not to comment on it. it hardly fazed her— she was briefly reminded of the quaint wardrobes of her traditionally rural parents, and how her own father owned no more than two pairs of overalls and three pairs of jeans. 

at the same time, sissel sensed that she was being admired, and it filled her with warmth. all she was wearing a white blouse, jeans, red scarf, and matching flats, which seemed perfectly casual to her, but every brief comment she received about how “stylish” she was was soon added to a mental database of  _ proof _ that her past could be swept under the rug, that nobody needed to know this was her first time in the city, that she wasn’t terribly naive and easy to manipulate. 

sissel realized with horror that she had run out of sandwich to eat and was now expected to hold a conversation. “...i guess we’re friends now.”

“yeah,” yomiel mumbled.

sissel looked straight at him for more than a second for possibly the first time. the sunglasses at least reduced the pressure of making eye contact, but as she was pondering that, sissel violently noticed that she found him attractive. they ate the rest of their meal in silence, and when they were done, sissel promised to “see him around” before grabbing her bag and heading out.

  
  


it was probably their fifth or sixth lunch together before sissel said the words she by no means had expected to say so soon into her college experience. it happened in the middle of a surprisingly comfortable conversation about plans for the future, a subject both found equally exciting and distracting. something about that day and that conversation made it seem so easy to sissel to simply say whatever was on her mind, so she did.

“i think i really like you, you know.”

“oh, thank  _ god  _ i was reading into you right.”

the rest of the day was a blur. something along the lines of yomiel admitting he had been infatuated since the first time they met, sissel silently acknowledging that she hadn’t felt the same, but muffling that acknowledgement with the euphoria of entering into her first relationship. after that brief, fleeting moment, sissel didn’t have any more doubts the rest of that day about whether yomiel was the person she wanted to be with. 


	3. concentric circles

sissel and yomiel were there at each other’s graduations, as they were together nearly constantly for the rest of college. the years were difficult to tell apart; they stayed in the same small social circles and neither strayed from the path of their majors. sissel got her degree in art history, yomiel quickly entered the workforce as a systems engineer. when yomiel’s job took him to the nation’s capital, sissel followed. he was older, so she quietly and swiftly tamped down her considerations of entering a graduate program and increasing her odds of starting a career in museum curation. what did it matter when they got their first apartment, and yomiel was suddenly making so much more money than she probably ever could, because who needs another averagely-performing humanities student with relatively small dreams? 

yomiel focused on his computer, while sissel focused on keeping the apartment clean. her mother began to send her increasingly short letters, as she was still disappointed in her daughter for not pursuing something sensible like nursing or accounting. she knew sissel didn’t have a head for numbers, but she also knew she was likely to become a desperately sad housewife without something to keep her busy, and the farm was no longer an option. sissel passed the time reading, planning her fantasy family, collecting little inoffensive things like vinyl records and scarves. her relationship with yomiel was warm, she really wasn’t unhappy, she really thought it was just her mother being controlling always when she called her on the phone to say that she wouldn’t come to the wedding if sissel didn’t end up marrying some sort of doctor, but the sense that walls were closing in on her on multiple sides was omnipresent and suffocating. 

three years passed that way.

sissel smiled and sat down next to her brand new fiancé. the ring was beautiful, really. “do you think a lot about the future? i...i think i’d like to start a family sooner rather than later.” 

yomiel nodde— 

i don’t understand. bullshit. bullshit. reeks of shit. lies. didn’t do anything. no evidence. wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t. no wonder he tried to. how could they let him? 

sissel finished writing and put her pen down. she left the letters clean, precise, immaculate, just like the simplicity of her message. it didn’t matter that she hadn’t been able to form a coherent thought for a week. it could never matter ever again, because this note was now physical proof that she had kept her wits about her to the very end, because no hysterical housewife-to-be could write in such a neatly cursive font. 

sissel thought about college. she thought about a full life ahead of her, full of colored light on stone floors and snaking white hallways lined with canvases and  _ little cards,  _ little  _ words _ written by  _ her _ and it wouldn’t matter if visitors didn’t know her name because she found attention paralyzing. 

sissel thought about the likelihood of being discovered before the flies began to eat away at her skin. she thought about the farm, and about how long it would take for her parents to get suspicious about the radio silence. she thought about how the only person who would miss her was already gone.

the rope is so, so heavy.

the chair. the rope. give it a kick. oh god jesus christ oh 

_ I’m coming for you, Yomiel. _

_ _ i wake up, panting, unable to remember my own dream. it was sad, though. i think i choked on my own saliva. there was something more, but...

today, yomiel gets moved from the hospital to his prison cell. they say he took a little girl hostage, but there had to be some kind of good reason for it. there had to be. and apparently he also saved her life and got ridiculously hurt in the process. it’s insan— 


	4. denouement

was that another dream? 

i reach out in front of me. i rub yomiel’s back. he’s beside me. of course he’s beside me.

his hair is down; i bury my face in it. he turns over and kisses me. it’s been almost a year since he came home, but i still treasure being able to touch him again. 

last night, he told me everything. about what happened after he  _ died _ , and then  _ i _ — 

“yomiel.”

he opens his eyes. “yeah?”

“i think i dreamt about what you told me. the...suicide.”

silence. a strong wind squeezes through the small gap between the window and the sill and shakes the curtains. “did it feel like a memory?”

“i don’t know. probably not, since i never dreamt about it before you told me.”

yomiel wraps his arms around me. “that’s good.” 

when he first came home, i took a couple days off of work to help him get adjusted. his mobility is still pretty limited, and i didn’t feel comfortable leaving him in the apartment all day before i know he’s comfortable. 

it’s still strange to go back to the museum, knowing i have a future to keep building, while yomiel sits at  _ home.  _ i don’t want to slow down,  _ he _ doesn’t want me to slow down, and now he’ll depend entirely on my salary, so i  _ can’t  _ slow down. 

did he feel the same way all those years ago, when he had a nation’s security in his hands and i was holding a freshly-unfrozen dinner? 

i flip a corner of the covers over. still getting used to the extra warmth in this bed. “i’m glad to have you back every night,” i whisper.

he doesn’t respond. i wonder if he’s thinking about everything he told me last night, and if so, how long it’s been since he  _ wasn’t  _ thinking about it. i’ve never seen someone more physically embody the concept of getting something off of one’s chest, and it explained so  _ much—  _ months of averted gazes and stammered apologies to jowd, and alma, and even their young daughter, almost entirely unprompted— goes to show what i know; i never would’ve expected to be the one missing out on crucial life events in the last decade. 

the phone rings. i reach over and grab it on my nightstand before yomiel can even try to get out of bed. 

“hello, this is sisse-”

“it’s alma.”

“oh.” yomiel told me he had made a pact with jowd to finally explain everything to their beleaguered wives simultaneously. “sleeping well?” i ask maybe a  _ little  _ more sardonically than intended.

“not a wink.” she chuckles a bit. “mind racing a mile a minute.” her voice sounds so heavy that it suddenly becomes a little hard to breathe. “i wanted to ask you if you wanted to have lunch. alone.”

“of course, but…”

“just for fun. i know you don’t work tomorrow. we’ll make it a girls’ day out, or at least a couple hours.”

she’s right: i don’t work tomorrow. “i’m game. try to get at least a  _ little  _ sleep, even if it’s just for me.”

“alright. see you then.” for a moment, i fall for the cheeriness of her voice, but i’ve known her for too long now to genuinely believe she’s okay. 

a long, restless night stretches into an even longer day. by the time it’s finally noon, the lack of sleep catches up with me, but i force myself to leave yomiel, and our bed, behind me.

i open the door of the cafe. she sits at a table in the corner, and smiles at me, but it’s an even uneasier smile than normal. she must notice that  _ i’ve  _ noticed, because she smiles even wider before giving up. i sit down across from her just as her face falls.

“no point skirting around it. i think kamila  _ remembers _ .”

i don’t move. alma tries to muster up another grin.

“it was just in a dream, though, so maybe she simply overheard her father? which is itself worrying, but…”

“did you have any dreams?”

“huh?”

“last night.”

“no. not like kamila’s. why?”

i tell her about my dream.

“bizarre.” alma pushes a half-eaten coffee cake towards me. “knowing both of us, i assume you haven’t eaten much in the last twenty-four hours. you know how middle-aged girlfriends will promise to go the gym together, or join a book club? let’s do that, but with basic self care tasks.”

ignoring the kamila thing and the possibility that we’ve all been cursed together by some freaky meteorite and really almost everything going on right now i shove words through my barely-moving mouth like a square peg into a round hole. “so...how do you  _ feel  _ now about yomiel?”

alma grabs my shaking hands and looks me directly in the eye. her hands are shaking only slightly less than mine. “it’s complicated? it’s complicated. but trust me, i have my own gripes with jowd, too, starting with the fact that he’s lived with me the entire time he’s had this beating on his brain without feeling like he could  _ tell  _ me. so, weirdly enough, the part about using my own daughter to shoot me in the heart is towards the back of my brain right now. sorry.”

oh, i must have cringed too visibly. she squeezes my hands. i think she plants a couple kisses on them, but i’m watching cars passing outside, and i’m listening to dishes being washed behind the cafe counter. 

“i think you need some sleep, sissel.”

yomiel sits in the kitchen, eating. “how’d it go?”

“everything is going really well.” i can’t get alma’s face out of my mind when it contorted to say  _ “using my own daughter to shoot me in the heart,” _ but i start rubbing yomiel’s shoulders anyways. he tenses up.

“it isn’t, right?”

i sigh. i don’t have to answer. 

yomiel stands up, using the table for support. “at first i thought it would feel a lot worse to tell anyone about all that  _ shit,  _ and then right afterwards i felt like now everything would be  _ okay,  _ but now i have to deal with the fact that it’s somewhere in the terrible middle.” even with his various hip replacement surgeries, he’s unsteady on his feet, but once he’s up it’s hard to convince him to sit back down. he paces a few feet in either direction on the kitchen tile. “i think...i think in both scenarios i was imagining that life would be drastically different. but it isn’t. it’s just the same...confounding life.” 

i clear my throat. “alma said that kamila dreamt last night too.” i don’t have the words to elaborate with.

“you know when,” and he pauses to chuckle, “when you get up from the couch after sitting for way too long, and you can see the outline of your own ass in the cushion, and it’s still warm for a little bit? that’s what this feels like. i removed myself from the couch and there’s still a lingering...ass smell.” 

i don’t hear it in his words, but when he turns around, for just a moment, i can see tears pooling in his eyes. he gave up the sunglasses just a couple months ago, mostly because of the wedding, but i’m still unconvinced that he didn’t wear them to make crying less conspicuous. 

he begins to totter. i wrap my arms around his back and let him rest most of his body weight on me. “i can get used to the ass smell,” i whisper. “and i think alma can too, and i think kamila can too, and you know why i think so?” despite myself, i begin having to fight past quiet sobs. “because  _ you  _ have, and  _ jowd _ has, and you’re some of the strongest people i know, but alma and kamila and even  _ lynne _ and i are  _ stronger _ now.” i don’t want to go here, but… “and i could never, ever kill myself now, because even if something happened to you i have all of them to draw strength from, and we’re all really stuck in this together, and i don’t pretend to know how you feel but we finally have each other, and now i finally have  _ you  _ because you told me about...everything.” i’m getting the back of his sweater wet, but i don’t care. “am i making sense right now? i didn’t really sleep last night.”

i don’t wait for him to respond. “i’ve always felt that...the best way to give fate or  _ whatever  _ the middle finger is to love life and be happy  _ anyways,  _ and i know i didn’t think that way when it was most important but we  _ have _ to now or else it was all for nothing. and that’s too painful to comprehend.”

“yeah,” he mutters. and it’s enough right now. 

“Tell me…what do you think will happen, Yomiel? It’s been a great life. We had a family, we had a house, we had everything and more. Even with that snag in the carpet, that unfortunate mistake, we had a beautiful existence.

Will we go to heaven? Hell? I don’t care, because as I hold you see light somewhere. We’ll be together. I don’t even cry anymore. Everything’s fuzzy except for you. A tear escapes your eye. I hold you tighter as I gently let a whisper out. As soon as I let it out everything ceases to exist and our world ends. How tragically gorgeous.”

— a much more innocent voice.

** _“be quiet now, it’s not the time for crying”_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, that last block of text complete with Proper Capitalization is directly from 13-year-old me. see what i saved you all from?
> 
> in all seriousness, though, i'm not sure how happy i am with this rewrite? i grew sort of tired of it partway through, and some of the rewritten sections, while technically better than the original writing, feel not nearly as imaginative. idk. i hope someone enjoys this, i'm going to bed.


End file.
